{"id":4331,"date":"2022-02-03T08:16:34","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T16:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4331"},"modified":"2022-02-03T08:16:34","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T16:16:34","slug":"mia-p-manansala-homicide-and-halo-halo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/mia-p-manansala-homicide-and-halo-halo\/","title":{"rendered":"Mia P. Manansala: Homicide and Halo-Halo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This charming second novel in Mia Manasala\u2019s standout new series is as delectable as the first.\u00a0 Instead of being set in the main character, Lila\u2019s, aunt\u2019s restaurant, it\u2019s set in the world of a small town beauty pageant.\u00a0 Lila, a former winner turned business owner, is now a reluctant judge.\u00a0 Manansala takes several typically cozy tropes and slightly tweaks them.\u00a0 There\u2019s a bit of a romantic triangle for Lila; there\u2019s a new business she\u2019s setting up with her two best friends, the Brew-Ha caf\u00e9; and then there\u2019s the beauty pageant to provide a rich array of suspects for the eventual murder.<\/p>\n

When the beauty pageant judges, contestants and as Lila refers to them, \u201cmomtestants,\u201d are revealed it\u2019s quickly obvious who will be killed.\u00a0 There\u2019s an especially reprehensible judge \u2013 one who seems to hit on the contestants \u2013 whose wealthy family has a lot of clout in town. He\u2019s so nasty that it\u2019s hardly a surprise when Lila and her cute dachshund discover his body on their morning run.\u00a0 Lila\u2019s friend Bernadette is quickly identified as a suspect, and that\u2019s when Lila and her posse of aunts go into action.<\/p>\n

This is all a fairly typical cozy set up but Manansala makes it special by injecting a few different ingredients into the mix.\u00a0 One is simply the Filipino American food that plays almost a character role in the book.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never had the dessert described here, Halo-Halo, but it sounds delicious as does most of the other food, which almost jumps off the page as it\u2019s described.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very rich aspect of the books so far.<\/p>\n

The other aspect that isn\u2019t so typical is Lila herself.\u00a0 While it is typical to have a main character leave the big city and come back to her home town, as Lila did in book one, what\u2019s not so typical is for her to be a woman of color, one whose experience as a woman of color is an integral part of her character.\u00a0 The other twist is that Lila is suffering from PTSD due to events in the last book; because of events in this book, discovering the body, for one \u2013 the PTSD is getting harder for her to conceal and manage, and it\u2019s an issue for her.<\/p>\n

None of these things hang heavy over the plot, but they are a part of Lila\u2019s character.\u00a0 As she is a twenty something who has growing and learning to do \u2013 and hopefully a long character arc to be played out over many more books \u2013 it makes her growth journey an interesting and compelling one. It adds to the richness and nuance of the book as a whole.<\/p>\n

That said this is a fun cozy plot \u2013 the beauty pageant is all you might hope for, with tears, achievement and back stage mom management – making the whole set up pretty delectable.\u00a0 There\u2019s also the bitter sister of the dead man and his oh so slick wife, both of whom are involved in the pageant.\u00a0 Lila\u2019s attitude toward the pageant is mixed \u2013 her mother was able to come to America on the strength of a beauty pageant in the Philippines and she was a winner herself, but she\u2019s not so sure it\u2019s a great outlet for the girls.<\/p>\n

However, my favorite lights out moment in the book was not pageant related, but cooking related.\u00a0 When one of Lila’s aunts serves her what she thinks of as \u201cmommy\u2019s chicken\u201d telling her the recipe isn\u2019t quite right, it sparks something in her in many ways.\u00a0 It\u2019s a turning point.\u00a0 The moment has it all \u2013 tears, joy, memories, both good and bad \u2013 as they say on many cooking shows, it\u2019s a \u201cperfect bite.\u201d\u00a0 As is this wonderful book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This charming second novel in Mia Manasala\u2019s standout new series is as delectable as the first.\u00a0 Instead of being set in the main character, Lila\u2019s, aunt\u2019s restaurant, it\u2019s set in the world of a small town beauty pageant.\u00a0 Lila, a former winner turned business owner, is now a reluctant judge.\u00a0 Manansala takes several typically cozy … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[756,755,162,711,128],"class_list":["post-4331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-beauty-pageants","tag-homicide-and-halo-halo","tag-kensington-books","tag-mia-p-manansala","tag-ptsd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4333,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4331\/revisions\/4333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}